The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

244 Chapter 9
organized nor internally disposed to partnering with Marines much earlier
on than they did. They too had to mature into the fight, get sick of the
violence, make efforts toward internal coordination, and fail when fighting
al- Qaeda on their own. 133 Analysis provided by other close observers to
the conflict, military and civilian alike, concurs. 134 Weston notes that the
increasingly sectarian government in Baghdad likely hastened rapprochement
between the “Marine tribe” and Anbari tribes. Sunnis in Anbar had
shifted from a fear of Marines never leaving the province to one of the
Marines leaving too soon. American leathernecks had become a buffer for
Sunnis fearful of their own Shi’ite- dominated government. 135
Once a selection of key leaders within both the US military and influential,
albeit sometimes junior, Sunni tribes in Anbar arrived at a position
of mutual compromise, the joint moves made toward effective counterinsurgency
were, for the most part, familiar practices in counterinsurgency
history, including the Marines’ own. The scholarship that thoughtfully, and
in great detail, documents the emergence of these practices in Anbar focuses
on three case studies in particular: the pioneering efforts of Marine colonel
Dale Alford in Al Qa’im in 2005, of Army colonel Sean MacFarland in
Ramadi in 2006, and Marine lieutenant colonel Bill Jurney, operating under
MacFarland in Ramadi’s city center. 136
Although the wider literature on the Iraq War tends to focus on Mac-
Farland’s success in Ramadi as the critical case in co- opting the burgeoning
Sunni Awakening movement, Marines, perhaps unsurprisingly, tend to focus
primary attention on one of their own. Alford’s earlier initiative in Al Qa’im
is celebrated within the Gazette as the first successful and enduring partnership
with Iraqi tribes and as a “textbook example” of how counterinsurgency
success is achieved. 137 His experience in Al Qa’im is given more attention than
other Anbar case studies in the Gazette, including a twice- printed first- person
account (2006 and 2007) of his approach and lessons learned. 138 When
written about by others, Alford’s successes are attributed to Marine- brand
innovation and adaption. 139 It is somewhat unfortunate that the few detailed
write- ups examining this case tend to treat it as an admirable exemplar of the
Marine value of “innovation” rather than mark its easily discernable parallels
with counterinsurgency lessons of the past (despite the fact that Alford notes
his explicit emulation of CAP principles in his own recorded accounts). Rooting
the Al Qa’im experience in successful practices within the Marine counterinsurgency
past would reinforce the virtue of serious study of the Corps’s
small-wars history in order to build on and advance lessons learned. By motivating
future Marines through the “innovation” value instead, the Corps is
reinforcing a forward- looking optic, one that may not be deeply informed
by the past and risks a repeat of the trial- and- error learning cycle: a process
that will produce less “innovation” in the counterinsurgency future than a
re- creation of lessons learned in earlier eras, wasting time in which these lessons
could have been implemented and advanced.